Coronavirus: Conspiracy Theories: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Moving on to our main story

tonight

, these are

conspiracy

theories

voted definitely true by the guy quarterly. By now he's probably familiar with at least some

conspiracy

theories

, such as the claim that the moon landing was fake or the argument that the Earth is flat and that scientists are covering it up. above and that's a theory that led to this absolutely stunning, clearly gorgeous YouTube video and leaving aside the factual inaccuracies, slant rhymes, shoehorned lyrics and bad impressions of Adele or Solid Bjork, my favorite part is the commentary, shit, this is amazing, I'm going to share this around the world, which is just perfect, but as you've probably guessed, the reason we need to talk about this is because the

coronavirus

has created a perfect storm for theorists of conspiracy because their theories are now everywhere for the

last

few

week

s.

People have been saying online that the virus is harmless or even that it doesn't exist. Numerous online sites and groups have falsely claimed that this virus is the result of some type of biological warfare, some type of biological weapon, or even created by the pharmaceutical industry. to try to sell more vaccines, a particularly persistent falsehood: 5g mobile networks transmit covid 19. you know, when they turn this on, it will kill everyone. A woman in Britain called workers murderers for laying 5G fiber optic cables when you flip that switch, bye-bye. goodbye mom, okay, there's a lot wrong there, but above all, the only time an English person should say goodbye mom is when they're physically coming out of the womb, goodbye mom, thanks for a great birth and after that, yeah, Mom, no. mom and thank you kindly for wiping my embarrassing buttocks, very grateful and those theories are just the tip of the iceberg here, you may have seen this video of two doctors making a now debunked claim that covert mortality rates were exaggerated because it was in all Facebook.

A couple of months ago or maybe you stumbled upon Pandemic, a pseudo-documentary filled with a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories in just one

week

was viewed over 8 million times, which is a surprisingly high number because that means it has been seen more times than this tic tac. of a cat that matches the tone of a piano, good cat, you deserve more views and the problem is that some online theories have already caused some worrying actions in the real world. Take the hashtag film your hospital, which spread after some claims that it was exaggerating and urging the severity of the pandemic. people to expose the truth which unfortunately led to videos like this where a man angrily demands hospital staff to show him his

coronavirus

patients and then yells at them as he walks away, maybe you can call the governor and tell him about the hoax, yeah , it's a hoax.

Where are all the patients? Where are the lines of sick people? Yes, she is right and can you imagine how confused that man is every time he tries to check into a hotel with no rooms? Where are all the guests? What are depressed salespeople trying to autoerotically asphyxiate themselves in your lobby? Maybe you should call the governor of this Best Western and tell him that his sign is a hoax and that the harms of conspiracy theories during a pandemic go far beyond confused hospital workers, as one study noted, given the transmissibility of the covid19, these beliefs are dangerous even if it is only a fraction. of Americans who succumb to them ignore best practices like social distancing, so

tonight

let's talk about conspiracy theories—particularly why they're so appealing, how to spot them, and what you can do about them—and start with the fact. that these theories are much more popular than you might think Polls over the years have shown that more than half of Americans consistently support at least one type of conspiracy narrative and look, I'm not immune here, embarrassingly, There is a part of me that thinks the royal family had Princess Diana. killed, I know they didn't because there is absolutely no evidence that they did, but the idea still lingers because it felt like an event too big to be accidental, there had to be some intention there and experts will say that that is actually Conspiracy theories help explain a chaotic and uncertain world and appeal to the human impulse to what is called proportionality bias, which is the tendency to assume that big events must have big causes, such as the murder of JFK, that event shook the world and the very idea that a lone gunman could cause such chaos was inherently unsatisfying, so it's understandable that people looked for a much broader answer, although it's telling that, on the contrary, less Shocking events have attracted much less speculation: the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan was a similar event in all respects, except that the president survived.

It was a minor event in terms of its outcome and therefore we are satisfied with smaller explanations, which is why there have been almost no conspiracy theories about the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, either at that time or exactly afterwards, and That makes sense, doesn't it? for a man to suddenly change the world is inconceivable for a man to fail miserably is not even remotely surprising which, by the way, is also the slogan of feminism and the appeal of conspiracy theories is such that people may even accept those that are they contradict each other. One study found that the more participants believe Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they believe she was murdered, which sounds crazy, although if there's an expert on something that's demonstrably dead but technically alive at the same time, it's probably the woman trapped in a loveless marriage to Prince Charles.

For 15 years, the point is that these theories have always been attractive and, in fact, have been particularly seductive during the global health crises of the 14th century. Conspiracy theorists claim that Jews were responsible for the bubonic plague in 1890 and newspapers claim that electric light was responsible for a global influenza outbreak and in 1918 rumors spread that the German pharmaceutical company Bayer had contaminated its tablets. of aspirin sold in the United States with the so-called Spanish flu, the only difference now is that our current pandemic comes in the age of the Internet when it is not only easier for people to do bad research and spread their results, but it is also possible that make the material seem surprisingly authoritative;

In fact, take the pandemic at first glance, it looks like a big-budget true crime documentary with sophisticated graphics and drone footage, and it deploys those techniques to tell the story of Judy Mykovitz, a former National Cancer Institute scientist who is depicted as A whistleblower on the scientific establishment, here's how the film presents a key moment in Michael Vicks' narrative where she claims her enemies arrested her for no reason and therefore what did they do? I'm not accusing you of anything, but you're in jail. I was in jail without charges. They called me a fugitive from justice.

Without court order. They literally kicked me out of the house. Our neighbors are watching what is happening here. You know, they search my house without a warrant now which seems pretty convincing, the police surrounded her house using violent force and finally jailed her without cause, but a few things you should know first, she was absolutely criminally charged as stated in a lawsuit that she herself later filed for the arrest. Mykovitz was arrested on criminal charges and when a reporter pointed this out to her, she said she meant the charges were later dropped, adding that I've been confused for a decade and will try to learn to say it differently as the footage of the incident is released. arrest. seems dramatic, it's actually not from his arrest at all, it's from an unrelated SWAT raid and it's literally the first result you get when you search for a house raid on a stock footage website, which is just ridiculous because if they would just work a little harder and search the house.

In a raid on other stock footage sites, they might have found this video of a masked robber whipping himself, then twirling the bird and dancing like a madman, and that's not only objectively better than the clip they chose, but It's also exactly as relevant and the problem isn't just that the movie misrepresents Mike Ovitz's backstory, it's that doing so gives him a credibility blunder when they allow him to make indisputable medical claims like these. Wearing your mask literally activates your own virus. you are getting sick from your own coronavirus reactivated expressions and if it turns out it is also sars cove then you have a big problem why would you close the beach? you have sequences on the ground in the sand you have healing microbes in the ocean in salt water that's crazy yes everything you just said is crazy the idea that wearing a mask activates your own virus is absurd to debunk it.

The politifact said there is no evidence to support this and then we are not sure what a coronavirus expression is. for the idea that there are healing microbes on the beach, look, I don't want to be the depressing guy who tells you that going to the beach won't cure coronavirus, but I will say that the beach is exactly three things, none of which are medicine, It's sand that goes down your ass, crack, salt water that goes up your nose, and sun that burns your skin. The beach doesn't cure anything unless you're comfortable and, by the way, when we contacted the pandemic director to quote our many problems with the film He responded not only by saying that he supports it, but also by asking in a country that marches with the song of believing all women why people are so quick to disbelieve Dr.

Mykovitz, to which the answer is obviously because she is telling people a good coronavis. prevention involves not wearing a mask and boogie boarding b the phrase is believing women, not believing all women and seeing that that's not what that phrase is about because the goal of that movement is not good, I guess we all have I have to take Rachel Dolezal in one word. Now, look, I'm well aware that, for some, even these criticisms of the pandemic will somehow be further proof that what they say is true, that it's actually a common feature of conspiracy theories, that they are inherently self-sealed and that any criticism simply becomes evidence that All of this is bigger than anyone could have imagined, although I will just say this if I am involved in this conspiracy, that means my puppet master is a t and what makes you think that They can carry out a global conspiracy when they can barely pull one off. complete phone call, how could they even send me orders?

Sprint. The point is that these theories can be innately attractive and thanks to the Internet they can spread easily and all of this would be quite dangerous before taking into account one of the most prominent propagators. of conspiracies on earth is the current president of the united states because he has been spreading them for years, often with the excuse that people say them and he is simply asking questions, something he has done about claims like obama was born in kenya, antonin scalia was murdered and that millions of fake votes were cast to make Hillary Clinton's conspiracies something like ugly buildings and deeply tragic adult children and that donald trump loves to unleash them on the world and then refuse to take responsibility for them anymore and he has been doing this throughout the pandemic, including this week when he retweeted a theory that the CDC and the media are lying about the virus to hurt his re-election chances.

Trump has broadcast so many conspiracies that the media has repeatedly called him the conspiracy theorist in chief, although I would. argues that he's not involved in any of this stuff he's spreading, that he's only interested in amplifying whatever he thinks might benefit personally and I can't believe he's saying this except the person with the clearest sense of how deeply cynical the Trump's use of conspiracy. The theories are this guy, when you get to Trump and the conspiracy theories of him, he does it in a very clever way. Trump never says that he believes in these conspiracy theories that he tells, he simply passed the amount and it is his way of hindering him. his way of mocking him is his way of spreading these conspiracy theories so Trump is just pouring gasoline on the fire and having fun watching the flames yeah quick Limaugh gets it and that's a line I never thought he'd say unless I was talking about toilet-borne chlamydia, but the thing is, right now, in particular, it's really harmful to throw gasoline on a fire because people are going to get burned, which makes those flames not as fun. to see why I don't knowMake no mistake, people who have been convinced that kovid was overblown, sometimes I paid a heavy price this time

last

month, Jupiter rideshare driver Brian Hitchens was a 19-year-old self-proclaimed coveted skeptic.

I thought maybe the government was trying something like that and it was kind of like that. They threw it to distract us. Fast forward this week and Hitchens has a whole new perspective from his hospital bed. This is a real virus that you should take seriously. My wife is on the ventilator. She's been like this for three weeks. and it's hard, it's sad, yeah, it's sad and unfortunately I don't think I'm the last person in this country to learn that a lot of what's on the Internet is the hard way, so what can we do here?

Media companies are finally doing more to label conspiracy theories or limit their spread, but the truth is that they can't do much because they don't always have the expertise to litigate what isn't true and the sheer volume of material circulating around there. it makes it almost impossible for them to grasp everything and that has also been a challenge for us in this story. Clearly we're just scratching the surface of what's out there and I'm sure if you look at the comments section when this is up. On YouTube you'll find people saying how about the fact that the virus was created as a bioweapon or what about Bill Gates' plan to microchip me and it would take days to analyze why each of them is and they still won't address those that emerge in the coming weeks and months, the fact is that it is going to be up to us, as individuals, to try to spot these theories and treat them with a skeptical eye before believing them or even spreading them, and there are actually three basic questions that you can do and that could help in that sense: first, is there a rational reason? explanation that is not a conspiracy because remember the theory that 5g towers are spreading the coronavirus or as that woman so memorably put it when they turned on that switch, goodbye mom, exactly, circulated helped by images like these showing maps of coronavirus cases along with maps from the 5g Launch and initially the similarity seems striking until you realize that those maps also look like population density maps, which makes a lot more sense because that's a correlation, not a cause, the deployments Wi-Fi and virus cases will be places where there will be many.

In fact, people have many maps that look like those maps. This one of Domino's Pizza locations looks like a map of coronavirus outbreaks and I'm pretty sure Domino's Pizza isn't causing it. Yes, your 6g of Wisconsin will give you dry cough, fever, diarrhea and covito. but not in exactly the same way as the coronavirus and knowing the difference is called science now the second question I might ask is has this been subjected to expert scrutiny and if so, what did those experts say because it's not uncommon for it to be cite theories. A single source, a doctor or scientist like Severly Midwest and Diane Keaton, make an outlandish claim, but it's worth checking to see if most credible doctors or scientists agree with them and, if you're thinking carefully, what if Were all of them involved in the cover-up?

That also brings us to our final question: how plausible is this conspiracy as a practical matter? Because not all conspiracy theories are fictional, obviously some have turned out to be absolutely true, but the very fact that we know the real ones actually teaches us something. One major study examined real government secrets, such as Edward Snowden's revelations about government surveillance, and found that the reason they were revealed was because of the large number of people who had to keep them secret. They actually created an equation to predict how quickly other science-based conspiracy theories will occur. It would have collapsed if the finding had been true that faking the moon landing, for example, would have required some 411,000 people to have kept quiet and would have collapsed in just over three and a half years, which makes sense, right?

Wait a second, how many people would have to be sworn to secrecy to keep a coronavirus hoax secret? I don't know if you've ever tried to throw, say, a medium-sized surprise party for your cousin, but it's almost impossible to keep it a secret because someone is telling Roxanne, no matter how many emails you've sent saying not to tell Roxanne. , roxanne is finding out and I know you may not find conspiracy theories plausible but you may also know people who do and while you may not be able to reach everyone you can reach some and now more than ever you can be important that you try, which clearly isn't easy, it's completely natural to just want to yell at them, why do you believe this nonsense, you titanic idiot?

I would say just show them this piece. but I'm obviously not the best messenger in the first 20 seconds of this story I called your uncle and I don't usually like that now what the experts say is that the most effective way to approach someone is not to shame them for believing something or overwhelm them with contrary evidence, but to try to be empathetic, meet them where they are and push them to think a little more critically, so we've asked some people who might be more willing to listen to help you start a conversation. For example, let's say your confused grandparents are spreading dangerous misinformation about not wearing a mask;

They may not hear me, but they can hear the man they've let into their house every night of the week to calmly tell them what it is and what it is. Not correct Hello everyone, the answer is alex trebek the correct question, of course, who is that handsome man I'm looking at right now? Yes, we asked Alex Trebek to make a 90-second video gently urging anyone who watches it to be careful what they find and share it online so you can show it to your grandparents and then talk to them about it, but let's say You have a cousin who is not a fan of Jeopardy, maybe they like wrestling or the Fast and Furious movies, well the good news is that John Cena has something to tell them there are also many things that seem official on the Internet, not all They are true and there are some things that seem false but they are not like this.

John Oliver and I are exactly the same age, yes, we were born the same year. on exactly the same day it seems impossible that two human bodies can age so differently, but it's true, I checked and it's important that you do, so before believing in any theory about the pandemic or sharing any information about the pandemic, it's good to know where. the information comes from yes, both things he said are true, you should check the information you see online and we are exactly the same age, it's something I think about every birthday and it's not just about alex trebek and

john

cena, we have a variety of people truly beloved figures from paul rudd to catherine o'hara and billy porter, each of whom made messages urging people to think more critically here is just a taste of what my people are going through it's me , billy porter hi, i'm catherine o'hara i'm paul rudd alex trebek

john

cena here wwe actor superstar internet meme dessert lover and number three on your partner's free pass list i'm literally a superhero the smallest but still counts I know we're living in scary times given the current state of things you're looking for answers about the global health crisis I think it's amazing that curiosity is good I'm also curious if no one ever asked questions Jeopardy would be a very, very show strange, isn't it?

But you should be careful because there are many convincing searches on the Internet and most of them are not true. You know, I once thought he was dead because the hashtag r.i.p paul rudd was trending, so before you go out and share something with your friends and family, it's good to know where. Where does that information come from? Is it a reliable news source? If you're unsure, look to see if other reliable news sources and experts say the same thing. A good way to tell if an idea or story you've read holds up. is that most reliable sources agree on it and finally think critically you are smart you are smart you are a smart cookie I know, I know you are we have the look of a scholar and the taste of macaroni all of you I have a brain, use it as If it was the first roll of toilet paper in a new package without skimping and you gladly have common sense, trust that part of your brain to guide you as you educate yourself during this difficult time and trust that I am doing what I can to jump to the number one on your partner's free pass list and number three on yours, be warned, that's all good advice and to increase the chances of conspiracy theorists running into them, we've put their full videos online in thetruetruetruth. .com and if you're looking to start a conversation with someone, picking up one of these videos is honestly a good entry point, that's our program.

Thank you very much for watching, see you next week. Good night.